


Aram's Notes (cont.)

by C Harms (WritingOtaku)



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-07
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-07-12 21:17:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 5,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7122883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritingOtaku/pseuds/C%20Harms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The fanfic continuation of the "Aram's Notes" web series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. ARAMS_NOTES_37.txt

Dear Future Aram,

I know I said I wouldn't be writing soon, but I didn't expect things to change this quickly. So much has happened in the past few hours that I… I don't really know what's happening anymore. I feel like I have to write it down just for it to make sense. Because nothing else makes sense right now.

I feel like I'm being trolled. I hope you – you know, me in the future – isn't a troll. At least, not one of the mean ones. Trolling, from an analytic standpoint, is incredibly useful for gathering data on a subject. It's where a bunch of data is generated via social media, people all saying the same outrageous thing usually to get a reaction out of someone online.

When something big happens like this, organic data is generated at a rate of about 1.2 mb of data per second, at least on Twitter. Facebook has something like 11 thousand pieces of content shared per second. Hootsuite is having a rough time just keeping up with these two platforms right now, though I've heard that tumblr can have up to 10,000 posts per second, on a bad day. Or a good one, for that matter.

It comes up a lot in forums and newsgroups as a way to bring traffic to the page, by having nasty people write outrageous comments at the bottom of a news article. And sometimes, you know, there are articles that are trolling, saying the most ridiculous headlines, like how Liz has been working with the Russians this whole time? 

I know that's not true. They would have caught it in that ridiculous background check if she were. Besides, she's done so much and helped so many people that she's more than entitled to a fair trial. 

Having this much data thrown on social media at once and trying to figure out what is the truth is equivalent to trying to catch a tsunami in a bathroom cup.

Reminder: I, er, you need to pick up bathroom cups. 

Your Friend,

Future Aram


	2. ARAM'S_NOTES_38.TXT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> #80 - Marvin Gerard

Dear Future Aram,

Today was... interesting. I got to go on a field trip and ask a criminal lawyer to undress. And then he stuck my best bug in a pitcher of water.

We've taken down a lot of bad guys, but I've never really done research on what happens to them after. But this lawyer that he brought in today defends all sorts of bad guys in court, and he was actually incarcerated for kidnapping his son. Even though he was disbarred, people still asked him for all sorts of He managed to get away today, after Reddington brought him to the diner. 

They demoted Director Cooper today, too. I guess I can't really call him "Director" anymore, but it feels weird to call him anything else. What should I call him? Mr. Cooper? That sounds dumb. Agent Cooper? Is he an agent? The Attorney General told me he had been moved to a desk job somewhere, but didn't tell me he was in the Criminal Justice Information Services division. I wonder if he needs anything while he's over there.

Don's dealing with everything changing, and he doesn't want to show it's wearing down on him. He wants to bring in Liz and Reddington so badly he almost started a war today by wanting to go into the Russian embassy. A WAR! I mean, we hunt bad guys, not start wars... right? 

He brought back pecan pie from the diner as "evidence", but the break room isn't usually where we keep evidence. Anyway, is it pronounced pe-CAHN or pee-CAN? I think it might be the last one, but Navabi says it's the first.

Everyone is worried about Liz. I wonder if she got any of this pie, though. 

Your Friend, 

Past Aram


	3. ARAM'S_NOTES_39.TXT

Dear Future Aram,

What did you eat today?

Today, I had a banana, my caramel coffee, and one of the blueberry muffins that Kate brought in. The banana was almost too brown, but it was still okay for today.

But I did some research today, and almost everything in the U.S. is made from corn. The banana came from somewhere else, and the coffee, but the gas in the trucks shipping both of those is made from ethanol, which is made from corn. And the starch in the muffin is made with corn starch, which is of course, made from corn. There are something like 45,000 products in just the grocery store that use corn.

Could you imagine being allergic to corn? I mean, we could still eat all the foods that are transported by corn, I guess, but no more soda at all. No more Chipotle at all with their corn tortillas. Even the caramel in coffee is made from high fructose corn syrup.

The recipe for corn is so stable, almost all of the corn is the same right now. All of the corn that's in grocery stores, or used in food for animals, or used as fuel in trucks is a copy of itself. All of the corn is cloned from the same genetic code and the same DNA. It's like having a bunch of clones of the same thing running all around, except they're not running and you can eat all of them.

The main problem with having a bunch of clones that you can't use to fight a war in space is that all the corn has the exact same immunities, so any virus that infects one will kill them all, which is what happened to the Gros Martin banana. When bananas first became popular in the 1800s, the Gros Martins were on the rise, but a bug known as or “Panama Disease" or “Tropical Race 1" killed all of them and now we're stuck eating Cavendish bananas, which are much more firm and don't have as much flavor. 

Today, Liz and Red led us to someone who wanted to put out a “Race 1" on all the corn in America, affecting something like 92% of the world's food supply. I'm glad we were able to stop them, but… it was tough to see Don try to chase her down, but I get the feeling she'll be back with us soon. Maybe. I hope.

I wonder what bananas will taste like for you.

Your Friend,

Past Aram


	4. ARAM'S_NOTES_40.txt

Dear Future Aram,

Today, someone broke into our apartment. But it was a good kind of break-in, if those exist.

Liz is alive and she was here today. Red was here too. They needed help and they wanted me to tell Don about them and someone they were looking for but still... they were here! They're alive. It's such a relief that they're okay, after tracking them through the shipping container and the farm and everything.

I mean, the task force is still supposed to be trying to find them, but I think that Don was more pleased to hear that they're both alive than anything else. Even if my apartment was cleaned out. Again. I wonder if they found the cameras from last time. I wonder if those are still against Nottingham guidelines.

But what I thought was super interesting was that the person they were looking for only existed online. And not just in the good parts of online, like the Google AdWords, but the places no one really thinks about anymore.

Some old server is keeping data from sites that were really popular several years ago, but now? Going on those servers is a lot like walking through a ghost town. They didn't keep very good records of who went on them beyond maybe IP addresses, not anything like the facial recognition software or keystroke analysis we have now. Those were so far away that the older programs can't even be modified to fit any of them.

It's not a secret that you can get away a lot on these servers either. I've never been a part of anything like that, but I read stories on Reddit mostly of users trying to save their sites with email campaigns, DDoS attacks, basic stuff. Usually sites collapse and die after a while, just because the owner runs out of money or interest and disregards the server and its fees.

But there are some servers that stay online for years after everything should have been erased, like this incredibly old MMO I found searching for this person. It seemed a little newer than “Dark Eden” had been, if you still remember that. Everything wasn't even encrypted; it just wasn't recorded. Perfect for hiding anonymity. I did a little digging and the server is paid for by a shill organization probably run by the bad guy Red and Liz were looking for. She ran some sort of revenge fantasy business.

I think my revenge fantasy would be seeing Xanga come back, but I’m not so sure she was going for that.

Your Friend,  
Past Aram


	5. ARAMS_NOTES_41.txt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arioch Cain (No. 50)

Dear Future Aram,

I did my first interrogation today! I think we did pretty well, because we got what we needed. I’m usually on the other side of interrogations, but I didn’t really think I could do it until Samar needed help. The owner of a hitsite was confusing her with a lot of lingo she couldn’t understand, and I was able to help her out by figuring out how his security worked. I never realized how much analytical skills and quick thinking Don and Samar need to make it through one of these until I tried to do it myself. I didn’t even have to use my rootkit virus to get what we needed, although I’m still wondering why he told me his computers are intellectual property. The data stored on them, like a specialized security program might be, but not the hardware itself. He had everything tied in a two-key system, where both parties have to be willing to use their key in order for the money to be transferred. Using it in a bounty system means that the bounty cannot be taken down by just one of those parties, which was part of our mistake. It was on the darknet, which actually made it easier to track the IP addresses moving in and off the site.

The darknet isn’t as scary as it’s made out to be in movies. It’s mostly unlisted sites that are kept private for their owners’ sake. But when they ARE the same things Hollywood makes them out to be, it’s a little jarring. They’re not supposed to be hit sites for teenagers, they’re meant to be intended for the local book club or cryptography classes. It’s not uncommon to see people talking about bitcoin and other crypto-currency in the darknet, but for someone to crowdsource a bounty, on Liz, of everyone, makes me wonder what else people use the darknet for.

The internet can say whatever it wants, and the media twists the press release to fit some narrative that they make, which is why the bounty for Liz was so high. People who believe what they read online are stupid. Liz Keen isn’t a criminal. What the site owner said today was right, there is no capitol hill, no committees, no debates on who the internet decides is guilty, but Liz is not. She’s part of our team.

I guess the internet should be happy, now that there are pictures online of her dead. I know she’s not, but seeing Liz lying in a pool of her own blood wasn’t something I needed to see today. The pictures were what was supposed to bring her back safe. Or part of what was needed to do it. Liz still not with us. I mean, not with the task force. 

Don refused to look at it at all, but he is handling everything mostly okay, I think. The committees and debates that he has to be involved in as our’s and Keen’s defender are rough to watch. I can’t imagine being in one, even after all the interrogations I’ve been through at this point to be here right now. 

At least Don gave me the red velvet cake pop he got at the hearing today. I didn’t know they gave out candy at these things.

Your friend,  
Past Aram


	6. ARAMS_NOTES_42.txt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 3.06 Sir Crispin Crandall

Dear Future Aram,

How far in the future are you? I mean, that’s kind of a stupid question to ask, but I -- you -- might end up reading this next Thursday or thousands of years in the future, I don’t know. Someone’s been taking smart people -- REALLY smart -- and cryonically freezing them in pairs, like Noah’s arc, only less cute and more frozen.

In case you haven’t been cryonically frozen, I don’t think it’s a good idea until we figure out how to thaw people out completely, and, like, bring them back. We don’t even know if the brain handle going into cryostasis at -196°C, let alone come out of it intact. I can’t even go to New York City in the winter without my fingers going numb. And there are dozens of people frozen right now.

I’m not sure what the future will be without these people. When Crandall took them and froze them in the sky, they didn’t really ever come back because we’re still missing that technology right now. Some of the brightest minds in my time were on that plane, in the middle of their work, when they were taken. Now, we won’t know more about fragment-based lead discovery in drug development or even how to proof an infinite number of prime numbers.

And the people on the plane, at least they had partners. Someone to share in weird frozen misery with. Not that I would ever want that but… I mean, I have co-workers who are my friends, but what happens when my contract with the task force ends? Liz is on to her next adventure. Don is on to his next case, fighting bad guys in the field. Cooper is already gone, and Navabi goes back to Mossad. 

I wonder what your life is like now when you’re reading this. Scary thought, but writing this journal is helping me keep track. Does Cooper ever come back? Does Liz? Is that barista still making three-pump drinks with four pumps? 

Please tell me they’re making a Taken 4, at least.

Your Friend,  
Past Aram


	7. ARAMS_NOTES_43.txt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zal bin Hasaan

Dear Future Aram,

She's okay.

There was an explosion at the compound, and the equipment had been blown out completely. I couldn't reconnect any of the communication channels, but after a minute of pinging, I re-routed it through a phone on the other side and... She was crying when she picked up. Farook, the bad guy we were chasing, was with R, she said, so there was no reason for us to keep chasing him. Then she hung up.

Something didn't feel right to me, so I did a little digging, and it still doesn't feel right. This Hasaan character was up to some pretty bad stuff. Not only was he involved in an attack on a CIA agent, but he also attacked Navabi and her partner with Mossad in Cairo. He had ties all the way back to a government protest by students at the local military college. He bombed a whole building, and a lot of people died.

Agent Navabi's brother was at the student protest, and he died in 2009 in the official report but... none of this makes any sense. The name Zal bin Hasaan, with no previous identification and no record of even existing, is attached to a string of bombings in Ziarat later that year. Of course, then all sorts of copycats and doppelgangers start appearing, too. INTERPOL was able to account for most of the people using the name, but not the original.

I didn't want to believe it either. Maybe you find it more believable than I do.

I'm at a loss at something like this. What would I do if someone I knew suddenly came back? Like Maman? I would probably ask her lots of questions about my parents, about her life... about what made her travel here. But I don't think it's the same. Maman died when we were young, and I barely knew her, but Samar was really tight with her brother until his "death" at the protest.

I don't think I would even know what to say if she called again. I mean, I would want her to, if she needs, but... how do you handle a revelation like that? How does anyone? You can't just bury someone and mourn them, only to turn around when they're still alive and do the same thing. I want to bring her flowers or something, but that seems too formal. Too much like a funeral. Or a date.

I have to wonder... Would Navabi's brother do any better turned over to the F.B.I.? I think he might. Cooper would definitely work something out with the Director. Right?

Actually, maybe not. You remember that one guy at Robotics who everyone loved to talk about and had the best designs? The one that wasn't even in the final battle but still somehow managed to win? And then was recruited by the C.I.A. in the middle of exam week? He showed up today in that same stupid sweatervest to try to look over my shoulder. But I got around his firewall by signing in to the Raspberry Pi at home and then using a (secure) proxy to find but what he was really doing.

The guy that was married to Liz at one point was having his phone tapped, and I was like, why? Why do we need any information on him? Then I realized -- oh wait, they're not on our side, they want Liz in jail. So they're going to tail the ex-husband until they find her. R's not going to let that happen, though.

I won't let that happen.

Your Friend,

Past Aram


	8. ARAM'S_NOTES_44

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kings of the Highway (#108)

Dear Future Aram,

We found Liz. Well, I shouldn't say 'we' because Director Ressler was really the one who chased her down in the woods somewhere in Upstate New York. I was just the one that tracked the call on Navabi's lead. But she'll be safe now! And Don says that we'll give her a fair trial. I don't really like the sound of the word "trial", because she really hasn't done anything wrong. Liz... She wouldn't really kill the Attorney General, would she? I mean, someone had to, because we don't have an attorney general anymore, but Liz? 

She's always been one with the team, helping us take out bad guys and working with some of the worst of them. She's been undercover so many times and worked with people I wouldn't even dream to meet -- even people that R just works with that aren't really on the blacklist at all are super-creepy and weird.

And Don was with Agent Navabi this morning really really early. Like, normally, it wouldn't be that weird for cp-workers, or other government agents to take an Uber or something together in the morning if they lived close, but... Navabi was on his laptop. Which I imagine he didn't leave on his porch.

Could you imagine the security breach it would be if a government-encrypted laptop was on a porch? Writing these on a personal rig would be the least of my worries. I would probably end up on the "Wanted" list myself, and Liz would be the one hunting me down... Would _I_ end up on the blacklist? With all of the information on one of the laptops Don has at his apartment, there would be something to get me in to trouble if it ever ended up in the wrong hands.

I should probably look at installing a self-deleting program that can be activated remotely in case, you know, Don ever does leave his laptop on the porch or something. Weirder stuff has happened.

Navabi was at Don's house really early. And normally, it would be great because, you know, there are lots of reasons why co-workers would be hanging out together! But Don's so normally well-put together that it seemed really out of place for him to miss a button this morning and I mentioned it to him and he said he had been in a rush. Why would he be in a rush if Navabi was there? Was he looking to get away from her? Were they in a fight?

Who am I kidding. I know they slept together. It sucks. I thought...

Agent Navabi was one of the team with us, and then Ressler said that she had betrayed him by getting me to find the location of R's burner phone at Liz's request. But that's not really her fault. You ever find something out that you don't want to share, because it's just that bad, but you also can't really keep from them, so you tell them anyway? I found the location of the burner phone for Navabi, but she was the one who was fired for it. Liz's safety is on Ressler... Don should really watch his laptop more closely if he's going to be around other agents, especially Director Hitchin. I don't like her at all.

Your Friend,  
Past Aram


	9. ARAM'S_NOTES_45.txt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Director (#24)

Dear Future Aram,

I know I should be writing in this log about how I feel or whatever, but... I'm not really proud of anything that happened today. I did a lot... Like, a LOT a lot. Too much. But I'm not sure if I ever want to remember. I'm not sure if _you_ would believe what happened today. I'm still having trouble believing it happened. It's too close to a bad movie. Except it was actually happening. To me. For real. 

In one of the Star Trek movies, the bad guy takes over a ship with a really powerful revival tool on it and shoots the crap out of the Enterprise. Like really damages it, and a lot of people are hurt. And Spock has to go into the engine room to put the warp drive back together so they can all get out before this thing explodes. Spock goes against orders, and uses the Vulcan nerve pinch (Man, wouldn't that be cool to have? Getting someone down without having to hurt them at all. I need to figure out how to do that.) to get in and fix everything. Spock goes into the engine room against everyone's orders, knowing full well that he's not going to make it out alive, because he says the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one. 

Kirk comes down and watches Spock's last moments through the glass. If there were any way to open the door and save his best friend and everyone else on the ship, he would have done it. And when I was a kid, I wondered all the time if I would have opened the door and tried to save him if I was in that situation. If Kirk had opened the door, he would have killed everyone there with the radiation, but if he didn't he would have to watch his friend die, right there in front of him. He didn't open the door.

So I did.

This organization was going to kill Liz. Agent Keen. She could've died, as R reminded me today before he lead me to an open grave. Like I really needed to be reminded. I saw her choking, watched her pass out on the floor with the clank of the chair falling behind her. I don't know what I said. I must have told them the code at some point, because she came to and was led out of that stupid prison-box we made for the master criminals. The ones that are REALLY bad, like, you know, R. Not Liz. 

This spooky-uncle called me "hopeful"... Does he even know what that means? I didn't know if I could keep her safe, with the Director behind me and several tons of inpenetrable steel in front of me. They cut off her air supply by filling it with nitrogen, so she would suffocate slowly. And what was I supposed to do? They changed all the codes to everything they could in the box, including the ventilation system, with this weird light-show password thing. It effectively made sure the only ventilation that I, or anyone else on our side, could still access was the only thing they couldn't, the front door they needed to get Liz out of. And if they let her out -- if _I_ let her out -- and they took her away I wasn't ever sure if I was going to see her again. See her alive. And if I couldn't see her alive again, then what was the point? 

I was a lot of things today, but hopeful wasn't one of them. All I know is that if I had waited just a little longer, if I hadn't told them the code when I did, Liz would have suffocated slowly at the bottom of the box. If I had told them the codes earlier, she would have left with the people who wanted her dead. I wouldn't have to hold a gun or threaten to shoot anyone or end up with some stupid charges against me about threatening a government official. Liz would be dead, and that would've been the end of it. Of everything. 

I guess this is my Kobayashi Maru. Let's hope there are no retakes.

Your Friend,  
Past Aram


	10. ARAM'S_NOTES_46.txt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Director (pt. 2)

Dear Future Aram,

Today, I did magic.

I mean, okay, it wasn't really magic, but it felt like magic. I had to break into an elevator's operating system to get it to go to a different floor than the one pushed, which is a lot harder than it really is. I don't know what it's like in the future (I hope it's more secure), but right now, the way the elevator reads what floor it's on is a little like how the older computers operated. Like, Collosus-era, where it reads dots through the lights in the machine. Except it's reading the dots that mark where the floors are on the steel in the elevator shaft.Also it has a fail-safe where it can't count dots *too* fast, because otherwise it's going too fast and it can damage the cables and the shaft. Instead, I just fiddled with the Python script so that the sixth floor was actually more dots than the eighth floor, and voila, it went to a different floor. Then I just had to reset it all back before the next person used the elevator. 

Still, the fact that it's so easy to get an elevator to go to the wrong floor is a little weird to me. All of this got me wondering, you know, if someone could get in to our elevator, or at least make it work a different way than it's supposed to. I mean, our elevator is really old, but it also doesn't have a computer. It has a crank, which is really cool to look at, but can also fall apart at any second. So I thought I should take a look at the mechanical system and see if there's anything I can do to make it, like, more secure or something. Make sure no one else could do what I did to that other elevator, even though the systems are really different.

Our elevator here that takes us underground each day runs on cranks and hydraulics. It has oil pumping out of the ground pushing the car up and down. Or it might be water. I didn't really want to break the pipes to find out, because who knows how long it might take before they're actually repaired. Come to think of it, I don't think I've seen anyone do regular maintenance on it. Like, ever. And I'm there all the time. And if I broke the elevator, everyone, including Director Cooper, would have to climb the ten flights of stairs up and down in order to access anything in the war room. And then he would have to climb up even more stairs because that's where his office is.

I mean, I'm sure not a lot of people hack elevators, or even want to hack elevators. The fail-safe in most elevators, including ours, hasn't really changed since like, the 80's. And anyone can just get into the same network by getting into the intranet of the developer through Amazon web services.

But I just wanted to make it go to a different floor than what was pressed. Not like I'm proud of what I did, I just didn't expect an elevator to be so easy to change the settings for. There are only a couple of things the elevator can do in the first place, if the cables still hold the box itself. But I guess on most buildings, changing what the buttons in the elevator wouldn't really do much. It would just go to a different floor than the one you hit the button for. You, if you were riding in the elevator and there was no one to take you to whatever fake destination they wanted you to go to, would eventually figure out the pattern and select the button for the floor you actually wanted.

This really wasn't anything I did, because everyone else made the eighth floor look like the sixth. If the eighth floor looked like the eighth and not the sixth, or maybe if the elevator system worked on even a basic-level keycard security system or something, the Director of Clandestine Services for the United States would have known what was different and just gone back into the elevator, and none of this would have happened.

Now, I could've gone in and changed the number of dots the elevator counted to get it to go to a different floor, but that would be like, terrible. Anyone inside would've been crushed with the rushing force of momentum, which is really not what we were going for. We (I say we, as like, the rogue task force. Plus a few other people. Minus Don.) had to get this guy alive to the right place.

Not that it really mattered, because his body fell into a house in Putten in the Netherlands. From a private jet that was licensed to Venezuela. On the way to a hearing in Geneva.

But Liz is free now!

Your Friend,  
Past Aram


	11. ARAMS_NOTES_47.txt

Dear Future Aram,

Sometimes, it gets really quiet in the war room. Like, really quiet, like when everyone's out finding information. Not necessarily saving the world -- because those are the times when the we're the most active, when someone is out in the field that we have to save, or can make sure they can save the world. But there are times when they're NOT saving the world, when they're out getting information -- or coffee or beer or go see "The Interview" as a group to get discount tickets or whatever -- and those times, they get really quiet for such a big room.

And I'm grateful to have the quiet times, you know? I like to think that it means our jobs are working. That's kind of the idea of the FBI itself -- if we take in all the bad guys, we don't have anything to worry about. In theory.

And when I was hired at the FBI, one of the questions I asked in the interview was whether or not I was going to go in the field with the guns. It was required that I trained on them for, you know, safety purposes. Of course, I was only supposed to be shooting paper, not people, but you and I both know how that ended.

But they said that I probably wouldn't have to do any field work. Instead, I would be monitoring the security systems and the communications while I was on contract, make sure everyone could hear each other. Which was fine with me. I'd rather be doing that any day of the week, actually. And I told Cooper that.

Director Cooper's back in charge, by the way, which is good because I really didn't like Director Panabaker. I don't know why I'm calling her that. She's not even a real director! She wanted to take Liz in when she was under arrest, take her somewhere where she would be killed because of some weird, shadow government alliance. Director Cooper isn't going to let anyone be killed, including Liz, who became a consultant and gets to hang out with me!

Except she doesn't really. Being important and all. She must have super-secret work to do, because she ended up beaten in the hospital after running out.

I should bring her something. But I don't think she'd like flowers. Books, maybe?

Anyway, it gets so quiet in the big room sometimes when everything is going just right, or when everyone goes out to the bar or whatever, and usually I bring a hard drive with me to work with something on it that I can watch if I can. Nothing too weird, I think, just stuff I used to watch when I was a kid. I sometimes forget my hard drive at home too, when I'm in a rush, so I uploaded a few files to the mainframe, just in case there's one of those quiet moments. It's not really stuff that's classified, because how can you classify something that already aired, but because it's running on an encrypted system, something where the whole mainframe is considered classified, it's got the Curve system on it. 

Which is exactly what I'm going to tell Director Cooper if he ever finds the Doctor Who on the mainframe.

Your Friend,  
Past Aram


End file.
